What house demolition covers
A full house demolition removes the building, its footings and stumps, the slab if there is one, the concrete paths and driveway, the sheds and fences you want gone, and the old drains, and leaves a block that is level, compacted and ready for a builder or a surveyor. It includes the permit work that makes that legal: the asbestos survey, the section 29A consent from the City of Ballarat, the building permit, and the notices to neighbours and the asbestos removalist's notice to WorkSafe.
What it does not automatically include is a planning permit. If the house is in a heritage overlay, which applies in more than twenty precincts including Soldiers Hill, Central Ballarat and Ballarat East, that comes first and is a separate process with its own page: demolishing in a heritage overlay.
Ballarat houses, by construction
How a house comes down depends on what it is made of, and Ballarat has every era side by side.
| House | What it means on the day |
|---|---|
| Weatherboard cottage, 1860s to 1930s | Timber frame on bluestone or timber stumps, lime mortar brick chimneys, pressed metal or lath and plaster inside. Comes apart quickly. High salvage value: baltic pine floors, lacework, bricks, bluestone. |
| Housing Commission brick, 1950s | Cavity brick or brick veneer on a slab or strip footing, often with a fibro sleep-out or laundry added later. Heavier loads, more concrete to break out. |
| Brick veneer, 1960s to 1980s | Timber frame with a single skin of brick, concrete tile or iron roof, usually fibro eaves and sometimes fibro wet areas. The standard Wendouree, Sebastopol and Delacombe knockdown. |
| Fibro house, 1950s to 1970s | Cement sheet walls and sometimes roof. Most of the building is a licensed asbestos removal before it is a demolition. |
| Double brick, any era | Solid walls both skins. Slowest to demolish, largest tonnage, and the bricks are often worth cleaning and selling. |
What has to happen before the machine arrives
Six things, in roughly this order, and a demolition cannot legally start until all of them are done.
- Asbestos survey. An asbestos assessor or occupational hygienist inspects and samples the house. Most Ballarat homes built before 1990 contain some, and the survey decides how much of the job is licensed removal.
- Services abolished. Power disconnected and the service abolished by Powercor, gas meter removed through the retailer and AusNet, water and sewer capped at the boundary by a licensed plumber with Central Highlands Water's property services contacted, nbn and phone lead-ins removed. See the before demolition checklist.
- Section 29A consent. The City of Ballarat confirms the property is not subject to a heritage overlay or a planning permit requirement, or that the planning permit has been issued.
- Building permit. Issued by a registered building surveyor under the Building Act 1993 once the consent is in hand and the demolisher is named.
- Protection work. Where the house is close enough to the boundary that demolition could affect the neighbour's building or land, a protection work notice goes to the adjoining owner before work starts.
- Asbestos removal. A licensed removalist takes it out, having notified WorkSafe beforehand, before anything else is touched.
On the day
Salvage goes first: cast iron lacework, pressed metal ceilings, leadlight, good hardwood and sound bricks. Then the roof and the frame come down with a 20 tonne excavator fitted with a grab, working from one end so the structure stays stable until each section is on the ground. Water is kept on the dust. Brick chimneys come down in a controlled drop or are taken apart. Timber, steel, brick, concrete and mixed waste are loaded separately, because sorted loads are cheaper to dispose of and most of them are recycled.
Stumps and footings come out, old drains are capped, holes are backfilled and compacted, and the block is graded. On an ordinary single-storey house that is two to four days of machine work.
What Ballarat adds
Mine workings. East of the city centre, from Golden Point and Black Hill through Ballarat East and Brown Hill, the ground was mined in the 1850s and 1860s. Shafts were filled with whatever was to hand. A geotechnical report is common before a rebuild on these blocks, and machine positions are chosen with it in mind.
Weather. Ballarat is 435 metres up and cold. Winter sites are wet and clay goes to pudding under tracks. The block is often finished with a layer of crushed rock on the crossover so the builder's trucks can get in.
Neighbours. Inner Ballarat blocks are narrow and the old cottages sit close to the side boundary. Protection work notices and a conversation over the fence are part of most inner city jobs.
What house demolition cannot fix
A demolisher cannot pull down a house in a heritage overlay without a planning permit, and cannot promise the council will grant one. A demolisher cannot certify the block as fit to build on: that is a geotechnical engineer. And a demolisher cannot shorten the time the distributor takes to abolish the power or the council takes to consent. Those clocks belong to other people.
Check the current rules before you rely on this
This page describes how house demolition is approved and carried out in Ballarat. It describes the rules in general terms as they stood in October 2026. Standards, forms, thresholds and fines change.
The authoritative sources are Building and Plumbing Commission practice note DE 01, demolition report and consent, City of Ballarat, apply for report and consent to demolish, Building Act 1993 and WorkSafe Victoria case study on asbestos removal in domestic demolition. Where anything here differs from those sources, they are right and we are not.
We are not building surveyors, planners, hygienists or lawyers. For what applies to your building, ask a registered building surveyor or ring the City of Ballarat on 03 5320 5500.
Accurate at the time of writing, October 2026. Always check the source before relying on it.